Mountain Weather 2/8/16

CB Avalanche CenterWeather

Date: 02/08/2016

The high pressure ridge over the West Coast will continue to dominate our weather through the work week. As the ridge slowly shifts east this week, we can expect a gradual warming trend in the mountains over valley inversions, and wind speeds easing. There is a weak disturbance in the forecast for next weekend, but it won’t be enough to feed our powder appetites that will surely be growing all week.

Today

High Temperature: 30
Wind Speed: 10-20
Wind Direction: NW
Sky Cover: Partly Cloudy
Snow: 0

Tonight

Low Temperature: 17
Wind Speed: 7-17
Wind Direction: N
Sky Cover: Mostly Clear
Snow: 0

Tomorrow

High Temperature: 32
Wind Speed: 5-15
Wind Direction: NW
Sky Cover: Mostly Clear
Snow: 0

Front Side Snodgrass

CB Avalanche Center2015-16 Observations

Location: Crested Butte Area
Date of Observation: 02/07/2016
Name: Evan Ross
Subject: Front Side Snodgrass
Aspect: South East, South
Elevation: 9,400-10,400 BTL terrain.

Avalanches:
Weather: Clear sky with some thin clouds developing in the afternoon. Calm winds, strong solar.
Snowpack: Toured on mostly low angle or sub 30 degree terrain. Snow surface on low angle was staying dry, while SE slopes over 25 degrees had a moist snow surface and all south slopes were also moist. No obvious signs to instability, and 29th interface was in the 4-5cm range and would have been hard to collapse.
Briefly got an easterly slope that had avalanched back during the Christmas cycle. Quick obs pointed at a poor structure that would need more time to understand if it was something to be concerned about.

Snodgrass North Face

CB Avalanche Center2015-16 Observations

Location: Crested Butte Area
Date of Observation: 02/07/2016
Subject: Snodgrass North Face
Aspect: North, North East
Elevation: 100000

Avalanches: Observed various naturals on the north face of Snodgrass. Looked like they mostly ran around the tail end of that last cycle. Saw one large slab that had slid on the upper steep nose top of the ridge. Mid way down another large slab went, saw two different layers that went. At the bottom two gullies had slid down across the road.
Weather: Sunny
Snowpack: Deep

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Avalanches above/onto East River Trail

CB Avalanche Center2015-16 Observations

Location: Brush Creek Area
Date of Observation: 02/07/2016
Subject: Avalanches above/onto East River Trail
Aspect: South East, South
Elevation: 9,000 – 9,600

Avalanches: On a tour up Strand Hill noted multiple SS avalanches on the S facing hillside above the East River Trail. Several appear to have reached or crossed the trail. Every steep (>40 degrees?) section of that hillside had slid above the 1st mile or two of the trail. Looked to have occurred in the past 48 hours or so? Several pocket slabs below the trail had occurred as well.
Weather: Bluebird becoming breezy in the p.m.
Snowpack:

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Cracking/collapsing on Whetstone

CB Avalanche Center2015-16 Observations, Snow Profiles

Location: Crested Butte Area
Date of Observation: 02/07/2016
Name: Zach Guy
Subject: Cracking/collapsing on Whetstone
Aspect: North East
Elevation: 10,000-11,000 ft

Avalanches: Most obvious paths ran naturally in this terrain on 2/1. D1.5 to D2’s in size. Took a quick look at one crown; ~2 ft thick over F+ 2-3mm facets. These paths also ran in December. Unfortunately, the bedsurfaces are crusty and there is 3-6″ inches of faceting snow above them already, ripe for 3x repeat offender if we get another big storm.
Weather: Light winds below treeline. Continued snow transport observed over Anthracite Range and West Elk Range, but minimal transport looking towards Pearl Pass, Brush, Cement, etc. Few clouds.
Snowpack: See video. On shaded low angle terrain below treeline, the snowpack was 50cm of slab (F to 4F+) over 50 cm of facets (Jan 14 interface, F+, 1-2mm). We crossed about 10 open meadows, and got 2 rumbling collapses. One as we regrouped and were stepping out of skis, the other by jumping on the snowpack on skis. The Jan 29th surface hoar layer (2-4mm, F) is also preserved about 30-35 cm deep, and propagated in 2 out of 3 of our extended column tests. (ECTPM, SC, Q1). We got several shooting cracks up to 20 feet long on this layer on small rollovers.

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Profile NE aspect BTL

Profile NE aspect BTL

Brush Creek

CB Avalanche Center2015-16 Observations

Location: Brush Creek Area
Date of Observation: 02/07/2016
Name: Ian Havlick/Level 1 Avy Course
Subject: Brush Creek
Aspect: East, South East, South, South West, West, North West
Elevation: 9000-10500

Avalanches: Got small glipmse of Double Top natural avalanche as well as numerous D1 wet loose slides confined to new storm snow out of steep, rocky terrain on SE-S-SW facing slopes.
Weather: clear to slightly overcast skies midday, increasing moderate NW-N winds. Strong radiation, above freezing temperatures.
Snowpack: Moderate NW-N winds transporting small amounts of loose snow from surface, not forming signifcant windslabs. Numerous booming collapses, and secondary collapses from others farther back in skin track. Some subtle cracks were observed from these large whoomphs as well. DUg one pit on a SW facing slope, NTL, 10,400ft, ECTP20, ECTN17, CT15 all sudden planar, associated with crusts and small 1mm near crust facets above several different crusts. In general, slabs were 50-70cm thcikness.

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Snodgrass TH

CB Avalanche Center2015-16 Observations

Location: Crested Butte Area
Date of Observation: 02/06/2016
Name: Krista Chris Ian
Subject: Snodgrass TH
Aspect: East, South East, South
Elevation: 10,000 ft

Avalanches:
Weather: WEATHER: Finally a day that felt warm! Thermometer said 15 but felt like 30. Blue skies and calm winds at TH but wind banners off Gothic, Emmons, and a few others in the north end of the valley.
Snowpack: SNOWPACK/AVALANCHE OBS: We were not in any Avy terrain today and stayed close to TH due to time and our big group. We travelled easily on the snow with our skis/split boards but boot pen was 50+ cm in lots of places. HS averaged 95- 130 cm.

Mountain Weather 2/7/2016

CB Avalanche CenterWeather

Date: 02/07/2016

We are on the east end of a strong high pressure ridge parked over the West Coast. We will continue to see moderate winds at higher elevations until this feature broadens and shifts east later in the week. Strong temperature inversions will continue to develop, with a gradual warming trend through the week in the mountains. Dry and mostly clear skies will persist through all of next week.

Today

High Temperature: 28
Wind Speed: 10-20
Wind Direction: NW
Sky Cover: Mostly Clear
Snow: 0

Tonight

Low Temperature: 10
Wind Speed: 10-20
Wind Direction: NW
Sky Cover: Mostly Clear
Snow:

Tomorrow

High Temperature: 30
Wind Speed: 10-20
Wind Direction: NW
Sky Cover: Mostly Clear
Snow: 0

Mt Emmons

CB Avalanche Center2015-16 Observations

Location: Crested Butte Area
Date of Observation: 02/06/2016
Name: Evan Ross
Subject: Mt Emmons
Aspect: South
Elevation: 9,500-11,600 BTL

Avalanches:
Weather: Lots of blue and not much for white skys. Calm winds with a few light gusts where we traveled, blowing or swirling snow at times on Mt Emmons summit.
Snowpack: Didn’t get into much for avalanche terrain. 1/29th interface was down about 40cm and HS was in the 100-130 on most slopes traveled. A few hand pits couldn’t get any snow to move on the 29th interface. Snow surface was moist near trees and where it was protected from any air movement. Ski pen about 20cm and boot pen was down to the 29th interface.

Large natural today on Double Top

CB Avalanche Center2015-16 Observations

Location: Cement Creek Area
Date of Observation: 02/06/2016
Name: Zach Guy
Subject: Large natural today on Double Top
Aspect: South West
Elevation: Above treeline

Avalanches: Got a second hand observation today of a D3 slab avalanche off of the SW bowl of Double Top above treeline. They believe it ran today; it is a path easily viewed from the highway and they hadn’t noticed it before.

Edit 2/7/16.  Viewed the slide with spotting scope from a good vantage on Whetstone.  Not as large as originally estimated, but looked very fresh. SS-U-R2-D2-O
Weather:
Snowpack: